[scotjam]

Hi

I'm starting up a pligg site.

To make things simple...the way I see it, there are two main ways of navigating the pligg postings, either by the associated categories that I've defined up front, or by the tags that posters submit together with their postings.

As I'm starting the site from scratch. I'm in danger of specifying categories that are inappropriate for the interests of the audience. But without any categories, no visitor will have an idea of what the site is all about. On the otherhand, using tags are the best indicator for the topics of interest, so I should avoid categories and use a tag cloud instead.

How does one start this? Which option? what's the experience of pligg starters like?

many thanks
Scotjam

[scotjam]

I've rephrased my question...

Has anyone checked whether they get more visitors clicking on tags than on categories to navigate their pligg site? I suspect that tags are a better way of finding the topics of interest of a pligg site than the actual categories.

thanks
Jamil

[dollars5]

A commercial modification for tags as used instead of categories is available for demo at Pligg Beta 9 - the tags were predefined and the client wanted it to be such a way that users will select one or more from the predefined list of tags. Send me a PM with your detailed requirements and we can tailor and provide your requirements. This involves pretty much modification to the site code.

[scotjam]

Hi dollar5, thank maybe a solution, but I'm interested to know based on site statistics whether people with big pligg sites get more users clicking tags than categories.

any ideas?

thanks!

[dollars5]

this is the statistics based on the several site we run:
People click more on categories to choose to view a content and are dependent on tags to a lesser extent.

Reason #1: Most sites that we have emphasis more on categories with having them located in the header while tags are deep buried in the sidebar boxes

Reason #2: Most sites have well defined categories and help users identify the content in better organized manner

Reason #3: Since tags are created/contributed by users - there might be errors and give an users a feel that they are not properly organized (there may be typos while submitting (kite and kyte), plural as a separate tag (cat and cats) ) - leaving users in confusion or inability to find the content exactly

There are few other reasons site owners can turn to tags as navigational/organization cues - such as the example offered at Pligg Beta 9
Reason #1: category offers a news to be associated to only one category, while a news can have as many tags as possible - so a content can be tagged on multiple keywords, they can effectively replace categories and help users identify a content more effective than a category click.

So it all depends on your real needs and functionality of your site to decide whether you will have to chose category or tags as navigational cues to identify content to serve your users better.